Keno Looks Like A Backroom Deal

Is keno addictive? Does it drain more money from the poor than others? Does it increase crime, divorce, bankruptcy? What is the experience in other states?

We don't know the answers to these questions because keno was slipped into the budget bill a few days before the end of the General Assembly's 2013 session and adopted without a public hearing. If that weren't troubling enough, preparations to introduce the game also are going on in private.

The state could have as many as 1,000 keno locations next year. They may be in bars, taverns, restaurants. But as The Courant's Christopher Keating reports, the public and even key legislative leaders don't know when or where the bingo-like video games will begin: Discussions are being held behind closed doors at the quasi-public Connecticut Lottery Corp.

What is this? A lot of people — town officials, potential vendors, treatment specialists, among others — have an interest and ought to be privy to the talks. Why aren't they? The secrecy has House Republican leader Larry Cafero wondering if the program is for real.

This may reflect the troubling trend we've seen these past few years against open government. At least seven bills were introduced this year to create exceptions to the state's Freedom of Information Act. They included bills restricting access to death certificates and convicts' applications for pardons, and a bill that would have allowed the state police to charge $16 for a copy of a report on a car accident or investigation and a 25-cents-a-page fee for merely reading a report. These thankfully failed, but a bill negotiated in secret to block public disclosure of some photographic records concerning the Dec. 14 Newtown massacre passed.

We the people do not cede to our elected officials the power to decide what we should know. Except in very rare circumstances, the people's business should be done in public. That includes anything connected to keno.